Modest Adventures Far from Home

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Category Archives: HDR

In the mid-nineteenth century, Walter Bagehot wrote that to preserve the monarchy, “We must not let in daylight upon magic.” If you try to see much other than the royal wedding this weekend on BBC World, you’ll be convinced (resigned?) that the Brits do “the magic” maddeningly well.

One last note about a column last week: I think The Fall of the German Empire by Ross Douthat in Wednesday’s New York Times is thoughtful. He calls Germany’s economic dominance of Europe the “third German empire,” writing,

“…if the test of Europe’s unity feels like a test for liberal democracy, it’s a mistake to see it only in those terms. It is also a struggle of nations against empire, of the Continent’s smaller countries against German mastery and Northern European interests, in which populist parties are being elected to resist policies the center sought to impose upon the periphery without a vote. And the liberal aspect of the European system wouldn’t be under such strain if the imperial aspect hadn’t been exploited unwisely by leaders in the empire’s German core.”

And finally, if HDR photography entertains you, like these two photos from the Mercado in Addis Ababa, you’ll find 579 more in the HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Incoming National Security Advisor John Bolton wrote an article in 2015 with the headline To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran. He thought then that “only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.” Here is a piece he wrote in the National Review last summer called How to Get Out of the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Colum Lynch and Elias Groll write at Foreign Policy, “Bolton has explicitly called for a preemptive strike on North Korea, advocates bombing to force regime change in Iran, and wants an open-ended military presence in Afghanistan. He has also called for a much more confrontational stance against China, including stationing U.S. troops in Taiwan.”

At the same time, CNBC reports that Incoming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “has … expressed disdain for a 2015 nuclear deal aimed at limiting the country’s (Iran’s) nuclear energy program … (saying) I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”

An evangelical Christian, Pompeo is “a longtime die-hard opponent of the Islamic Republic, who has for years advocated for a policy of regime change in Tehran,” says CNBC.

It may be a long, hot summer. This morning, moderate punditry is busy trying to convince itself that this team won’t be a disaster. One thing to look forward to: McMaster’s book.

Learning about whaling and visiting the defunct Við Áir whaling station in the Faroe Islands for Out in the Cold instructed me about the whalers’ life, about which I knew nothing. The last whalers by Lyndsie Bourgon at Aeon.com describes the winding down of a brutal way of making a living.

In books this week, Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism by Kristen Ghodsee in due in the house via Prime tomorrow. It’s kind of specialized, granted, but it’s an area of interest to me. I spent a fair amount of time riding the rails around the newly-freed East Bloc in the early 1990s.

This bit of the description got the book into my shopping cart: “Just as the communist ideal has become permanently tainted by its association with the worst excesses of twentieth-century Eastern European regimes, today the democratic ideal is increasingly sullied by its links to the ravages of neoliberalism.” Can’t argue with that.

Here in southern Appalachia we had day-long snowfall at midweek and now we look for springlike conditions over the weekend. Wherever you are, go and have some fun this weekend. Cheers for now.

I’ll be posting a new photo most days for the next month or so from our June trip to maritime Canada, the French overseas territory of St. Pierre et Miquelon, Iceland and England. We start with the tiny harbor on tiny St. Pierre island, just off the southern tip of Newfoundland.

Here are five shots from Gangtok, the very picturesque capital of Sikkim, a former kingdom now part of India, tucked in between Nepal and Bhutan in the Himalayas, up against the Chinese border. Click to enlarge.

And finally, Mt. Kangchenjunga‎, the World’s Third Highest Mountain, along the Road to Changu (Tsomgo) Lake, Sikkim. That’s quite a drive.

Common Sense and Whiskey, the blog, is companion to EarthPhotos.com, our collection of 20,000+ photos from 120 countries and territories around the world.

My wife and I live on a horse farm in Young Harris, Georgia, and spend parts of every summer in our tiny cabin on Lake Saimaa in Finland. Because my day job has outfitted me with audio equipment, I am available for studio quality broadcast author interviews via SourceConnect.

As to the increased political chatter here lately, I just can't help it.